I hope it works... There is a market of people who will not consider the iPhone - and they need an alternative to WindowsMobile.

There is a market, flybynight. I bought an iPod Touch.

It good to hear. My Treo has some features that the iPhone doesn't have. I thought about getting an iPhone as well, but the people in the Apple store couldn't tell me what options I have for using both with the same phone number. Can I leave the SIM in my Treo and turn it's phone off when I want to turn the iPhone on and turn the iPhone off when I want to turn the Treo on?

Too little too late.

I just switched from a Palm Treo 650, which I've had the last 4 years, to an iPhone a week ago. Palm users have been complaining that they're not keeping up with the curve for years. I was wanting to upgrade with Palm as I'd invested in applications for it. The upgrade never came. Successive models came out and they never stayed with the curve.

Built in WiFi? Nope. How about a better browser? Nope. Built in GPS? Nope. Better music applications? Nope.

I'm the last of a group of friends to stick with Palm this long. Everyone else went Blackberry or iPhone. Blackberry and iPhone have continued to innovate. Palm has remained silent. It's too bad.

The only good thing the Palm has that should be learned by other companies is the keyboard. It's teh best smart phone keyboard by far, and I will miss it on my iPhone.

The handset AND the OS have to be ready AT the announcement or within one month of the announcement, or Palm is dead in the water.

I am a LONG time Palm OS user and hope they do well. RIM, Palm, Apple, Google, and Nokia all have their place in the smartphone arena.

And I think that Palm could do just fine if the handset is better than the Android-based G1, which is almost impossible not to beat.

If the OS is what it needs to be, Palm could slowly creep up to a viable state.

But they need to to it RIGHT, and RIGHT NOW.

With Symbian going open source, and Android feeling it's way out, the competition is tough.

BUT, remember, Google doesn't make a handset.

RIM and Apple, and to an extent, Nokia, do well because of the marriage of handset and OS... most especially Apple obviously.

If Palm can do the same... marry the handset(s) to the OS, then they could do just fine.

If Palm's OS is anywhere near good enough, it could develop its own Application Store, but without the need to have a different iteration of every application for many different phones.

Make an App Store for the Nova OS apps, along with an area for the legacy apps that will hopefully run in the new OS.

Yes, Palm has a chance. A good one. But if, and only if, they have a product ready to ship within one month of CES, and with a robust OS that does have some darn good apps on it right from the start.

I do hope Palm succeeds. We need handsets that can come from more than one provider, and Palm can do that.

Long live Palm!

And Apple!

Greg

Well, if the latter happens, it's all good to me. Hopefully at least some of Palm's employees will go to the new company.

I honestly lost track of all the renamings and shuffles going on at Palm, but my (maybe wrong) understanding is, that Palm split into PalmOne and Palm Source at some point in the past. It was Palm Source that acquired BeOS in 2001 (?) and it was supposed to be used for the Cobalt OS which was discontinued (in 2004?). Down the line PalmOne became Palm Inc. again and Palm Source was sold to ACCESS, so in theory ACCESS and not Palm should be the owner of BeOS.